Sir David Attenborough on Charles Darwin

Started by René, January 14, 2018, 09:19:28 AM

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PabloMack

#1
I had the privilege to hear David Attenborough speak at the Bristol meeting of the SVP celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of "Origin of Species". They handed out a special publication about Charles Darwin's life. I should have tried to get my copy autographed but there were so may people there, I felt he had better things to do. I have great respect for both men. Charles Darwin was indeed a fair man as he gave Alfred Russel Wallace equal credit for their theory of evolution in a presentation held in London.

SILENCER

So Life, essentially, came from rocks.
The Universe was so awesome it just spawned itself.
Lots of assumption there.


Sorry, no cigar on that one.

cyphyr

Quote from: SILENCER on January 19, 2018, 11:13:52 AM
So Life, essentially, came from rocks.
The Universe was so awesome it just spawned itself.
Lots of assumption there.


Sorry, no cigar on that one.

Would you prefer a "divine" hand then?
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Hetzen

My wife works for the directorship at Kew Botanical Gardens and meets with Sir David quite regularly. There's a climate controlled room where that first edition book he's reading from is kept among other historical works. Quite a collection there is too.

When Martin (Tangled Universe) came over to the UK a couple of years back, she showed us the plant archive where all the species found over history have been dried and stored in folders on shelves from floor to ceiling, in multiple huge multi storied rooms. It was quite fascinating.

SILENCER

Would you prefer a "divine" hand then?

Absolutely.
I'd rather not gamble against Him.
He's a Boss.

Kadri

Quote from: SILENCER on January 19, 2018, 06:38:56 PM
Would you prefer a "divine" hand then?

Absolutely.
I'd rather not gamble against Him.
He's a Boss.

And he just spawned itself?

Hetzen

Quote from: Kadri link=topic=24037.msg242984#msg242984
And he just spawned itself?

It's turtles all the way down! :)

Dune


René

Quote from: SILENCER on January 19, 2018, 06:38:56 PM
Would you prefer a "divine" hand then?

Absolutely.
I'd rather not gamble against Him.
He's a Boss.

If there is anyone who can spawn himself, then it is God. He doesn't have to obey the laws of nature. ;)
On the other hand, a universe that spawns itself also seems weird.

PabloMack

#10
Quote from: cyphyr on January 19, 2018, 11:18:56 AMWould you prefer a "divine" hand then?

I saw a documentary which was probably "how the universe works". Seems many physicists think that arrays of universes are being spawned which have progressively different values for the parameters for each one. This sounded as though "someone" had "spawned" multitudes of trial universes to see which ones produce the best results. I can imagine God sitting at a computer writing programs to produce innumerable universes and then investigate the results like an engineer/scientist would. This is how I view God. A god that needs to run trials would not be literally all-knowing within an instant in time but would have knowledge and intelligence that is uncountably orders of magnitude beyond ourselves. To people, this being is, for all practical purposes, "all knowing" from our perspective. It is reminiscent of the way common people regarded kings in the ancient world and considered them to be all-powerful, yet literally were not. The Bible compares God to a farmer who casts seed and hopes for a good yield. I see God casting Big Bangs into space and watching to see the results. Here, God is not discretely making each individual organism as fundamentalists think. Instead, God is much like a researcher who defines the laws of physics and chemistry and the intelligence built into the materials in the universe behave according to the parameters set for each individual universe (or trial as it were). As time goes on for each universe, essentially the changes happen on their own according to the parameters set for it (or "word of God" as one might refer to the rules governing the behavior of the various parts of the system).

Matt

Quote from: PabloMack on January 22, 2018, 06:20:46 PM
I can imagine God sitting at a computer writing programs to produce innumerable universes and then investigate the results like an engineer/scientist would. This is how I view God. A god that needs to run trials would not be literally all-knowing within an instant in time but would have knowledge and intelligence that is uncountable orders of magnitude beyond ourselves.

It is not necessary for the "God" in this scenario to be more intelligent than the beings that exist in the universe he created. I think it's almost certain, due to the size of the universe, that somewhere in the universe there exists a being that is more intelligent than the being that created the universe.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Matt

Also, the intelligence necessary to create a universe might not be many orders of magnitude beyond our own, although it's certainly way beyond our current technology and understanding.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

PabloMack

#13
I think of our universe existing in a sort of "test tube"; God himself being outside of our universe test tube. There might be a rack of these test tubes so that God can glance at many universes at a time. And of course, if God (or one of his technicians) uses a programming language, it would be naive to think that the source code is in ASCII or even UniCode for that matter. The source code might not even be stored in a 2-dimensional document resembling a sheet of paper such as ours are. The source code might exist in 4-or 5-dimensional documents and be viewed through hyperspace. There might or might not even be a separate computer to run it on and the whole shebang might even exist in God's mind. Think of the amount of storage needed to simulate 100-billion universes all running at once. Then imagine 100-billion gallaxies in each of these universes and each galaxy with 100-billion stars.

Oshyan

Why it is easier to imagine that there is some god creator (who itself was created *how*, exactly? oh, we're back to the same mysterious/pointless origin problem!) than just to imagine that the universe "happened" for no reason at all, I do not know... As they say, it's turtles all the way down. If a god created us, then perhaps that gives our existence meaning, but what/who created god, or if nothing, then we're back to having no meaning for god's existence and, by extension, our own.

- Oshyan